An Orange County man who served 16 years in prison for planning terrorist attacks against U.S. military and Jewish facilities in Southern California has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for selling methamphetamine.
Ahmed Binyamin Alasiri, 45, a.k.a. Kevin Lamar James, of Garden Grove, California, was sentenced on Monday to 188 months in federal prison for selling nearly four pounds of methamphetamine while on supervised released followed his 2009 conviction for conspiring to plot terrorist attacks against the U.S. Alasiri was released from prison in 2019 after completing the sentence. A year later he sold methamphetamine to a buyer on three different occasions.
In October 2021 Alasiri pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of methamphetamine.
Alasiri was also sentenced to 24 months in federal prison for violating the terms of his supervised release, which he will serve concurrently to the 188 month term.
“[Alasiri] was industrious and obtained legitimate full-time employment, yet he did not hesitate to traffic in drugs to earn income,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memorandum. “He valued his personal short-term goals over respect for the law, the societal and individual damage caused by narcotics, and the risk of arrest for drug trafficking.”
In his plea agreement, Alasiri admitted he had “family members who were drug traffickers and that he himself sold drugs to customers.”
Alasiri had been on supervised release after completing the 16-year federal prison sentence for conspiring to levy war against the United States through terrorism, for which he pleaded guilty in 2007. Alasiri’s co-conspirators in the case committed multiple armed robberies of gas stations to raise money for terrorist attacks Alasari was plotting against Israeli and Jewish institutions as well as military facilities in Southern California.
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force along with multiple local and federal law enforcement agencies.